Michael Abrahams | Fact-checking in the age of the Internet

Emancipation Day was approaching once again, and I had decided, for my weekly column, to write about the unfortunate fact that although emancipated from physical slavery, with chains and shackles, many of my black Jamaican brothers and sisters are still mentally enslaved. I had planned to use one of my favourite quotes, attributed to the great abolitionist Harriet Tubman, to start my piece. It reads:

"I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves."

The statement is brilliant and describes a phenomenon I observe on an almost daily basis. Unfortunately, I discovered there was no evidence that Harriet Tubman ever spoke those words. According to the fact-checking site Snopes.com, the quote is fake. Milton Sernett, professor emeritus of history at the Maxwell School, and author of Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History, claims it is a "late 20th century quote from a fictionalised account of Tubman's life", and many other historians agree.

The discovery was disappointing, to say the least. The statement is a powerful one that provides much food for thought and has been one of my favourites for years. The revelation prompted me to investigate other popular quotes, attributed to famous people, and immortalised on the Internet, usually in the form of widely circulated memes. Sure enough, I came across another, attributed to the 14th and present Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, the popular Tibetan Buddhist leader. When asked what surprised him most about humanity, he reportedly replied:

"Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived."

You may have seen this quote in memes featuring an image of the Dalai Lama. Not only is the quote widely known, but describes a mindset that many can relate to, one of having misplaced priorities, and would appear to be the kind of statement an enlightened Buddhist would make. The quote is so popular that Forbes Magazine published an entire column devoted to it, titled 'The Dalai Lama is Wrong'. But fact-checking revealed that the quote has been misattributed to the Buddhist leader. In other words, he did not say it.

According to Wikiquote, the quote appears to be a loose adaptation of the work of Jim Brown, published by Reata Strickland as An Interview with God. The original text states:

"What surprises you most about mankind?"

God answered:

"That they get bored of being children, are in a rush to grow up, and then long to be children again. That they lose their health to make money and then lose their money to restore their health. That by thinking anxiously about the future, they forget the present, such that they live neither for the present nor the future. That they live as if they will never die, and they die as if they had never lived."

You may think that these misattributed quotes are no big deal. But they are. The Internet is one of the most powerful and important inventions of the 20th century, but is also a double-edged sword.

On one hand, information is now at our fingertips. On the other hand, much of this information is misinformation, some of it so convincing that we not only believe it, but hastily share it via social media and other platforms, and in the process deceive others, and in some cases cause irreparable damage to reputations.

For example, I recall a video of a woman beating her daughter with a machete that went viral. Shortly after that, a voice note, allegedly of the child speaking about sexual encounters with a man, was also circulated, and used by many to justify the assault. Fact-checking with the Child Development Agency, however, revealed that the voice on the recording was not that of the child and that there was no evidence that she had even been sexually active.

I too have learnt my lessons about believing and sharing nonsense. Most recently, I came across a video of some people in India smashing solar panels. The story behind it was that, because of their religious beliefs, they thought that the panels were an offense to their gods, hence the destruction. I am passionate about the environment, and supportive of alternative sources of energy, and also very wary of religion. I bought into the narrative and shared it on my Facebook page, only to realise that the story behind the destructive activity was fake. The people in the video were workers who were disgruntled about not being compensated for their labour, and their actions resulted from their dissatisfaction, not their religious beliefs. I subsequently apologised for sharing the misleading post and took it down.

We must be vigilant and mindful of not only being misled, but also of our ability to mislead others. Sometimes we may come across material that will support our agendas and readily believe it, because we want to. We want to believe that we are right. However, in our zeal to validate our opinions and worldviews, we ought to be honest and responsible. The information is out there in cyberspace, but fact-checking is critical, if we are to be fair in our communication.

- Michael Abrahams is a gynaecologist and obstetrician, comedian and poet. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and michabe_1999@hotmail.com, or tweet @mikeyabrahams.